With harvest ales, Oktoberfest marzens, brown ales and barleywines releasing across Michigan virtually every week, there's so much more to enjoy than another cinna-nutmeg-allspice blast that's fun for only a couple swigs.

But when I found Cold-Press Coffee Pumking from Southern Tier Brewing Co. of Lakewood, N.Y., I dropped it into the six-pack anyway. Coffee does great things to beers, whether stout, brown or even IPA.

For this one, the coffee was cold-pressed, making it smoother and less-bitter. Its flavors combine with mild pumpkin-spice flavors over some malty sweetness and pie-crust that's enjoyable to the last drop. The flavors balance nicely in the lightly-carbonated, amber-orange-colored beer.

At 8.6% alcohol-by-volume, one bottle is plenty for one sitting. But served chilled, the alcohol heat isn't very noticeable.

Pumpkin as a flavor always seems to be over-played even while the leaves are still green. And memes disparaging pumpkin beer are very much in-season. But in today's golden age of craft beer, plenty of brewers are able to turn it into something original.

As the column below, originally published Oct. 7, 2015 explains, it actually played a necessary role in America's beer heritage:

There's more to pumpkin beer than commercially spiced exploitation of a historic American gourd.

The popular flavor has inspired breweries to use the vegetal notes of actual pumpkin and brew beers ranging from dark and bold to IPA-level hoppy and even sour — well, after trying 11 of them, especially sour.

La Parcela by Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, brewed in Dexter, stood out from the rest with a complex blend with flavors like lemon, cherry and oak combined with pumpkin. I recommend the bottled version over the draft.

But what's really surprising is how many breweries bothered to use actual pumpkins. Unlike the pumpkin spice-flavored Peeps (never again!), Oreos, instant oatmeal and Hershey's Kisses, breweries making all but one of the beers I tried proudly stated that pumpkins were part of the recipe.

Perhaps it's a nod to the role of the pumpkin in American beer history. Colonists from Europe arrived on the eastern shores to find a place lacking fields of barley, wheat and other grains readily available back home. And with clean drinking water also tough to find, beer was especially important.

"They pulled into port, saw orange vegetables and said, 'You know what? We could probably use those to brew beer,'" said Bobby Vedder, a certified cicerone with Powers Distributing, which distributes beverages in Oakland and Macomb counties.Jeff Alworth in "The Beer Bible," a book published earlier this year, describes it like this:

"The humble pumpkin, totem of Halloween ... was used by American colonists to make rough beer for those who could not afford the good imported stuff. ... Finding suitable sugars for yeast to digest into beer was always a chore for those early colonists."

Pumpkin beers over time declined in popularity before the resurgence of craft breweries in the late 20th Century led to the novelty seasonal beer. But Vedder points out that pumpkins usually haven't matured in July or August when pumpkin beer is made ahead of the fall season.

But some breweries are clearly taking pride in their pumpkin beers. Vedder recommends that people who don't like pumpkin beer try Hooligan from North Peak Brewing (master brewer Ron Jeffries makes this beer as well as La Parcela; the two breweries are separated only by a hallway).

"It has this body and mouthfeel of a pumpkin beer, but if we're being honest with each other, this is an IPA," he said. "You're getting that vegetal flavor, but you're also getting this beautiful, beautiful hop performance."

Because pumpkin beer doesn't taste like most craft beer, and because it often has ridiculous levels of cinnamon, nutmeg and other spices, it's easy to find craft-beer drinkers who detest it.

"OK, you're on Beer Advocate and rated 10,000 beers, and you only drink Heady Topper," rated one of the top beers on Beer Advocate, Vedder said. "Maybe this pumpkin beer's not for you. But for the million other drinkers in that zip code, this is super approachable."

It's fun, whimsical, and if you bring a 12-pack of an IPA and a 12-pack of pumpkin beer to a Halloween party, "I guarantee you that that pumpkin beer is going to go first," he said.

In hopes of giving you a better idea which pumpkin beer is worth tasting, here's a list with my immediate reactions. And yeah, I gave Jaw-Jacker Ale by Arcadia Brewing a 3.5/5 even though it's one of those inauthentic spice-minus-pumpkin beers. Because it tasted nice — cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and all.

Pumpkin beers tasted, ranked, reviewed

La Parcela (5.9% alcohol by volume) by Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales: Great sour approach to pumpkin beer with flavors of lemon, raw pumpkin, oak, sour cherry and some grapefruit on the back end. 4.5/5

Cold Press Coffee Pumking (8.6% ABV) by Southern Tier Brewing Co.: Coffee flavor really sets this one off. Very smooth, pumpkin notes are there but not in the allspice blast way one may expect for the style. 4/5

Bourbon Imperial Screamin' Pumpkin (9% ABV) by Griffin Claw Brewing Co.: Vegetal pumpkin with allspice; barrel comes in on the finish. Complex and good for a novelty sample-- just a sample-- little goes long way. 3.25/5